Microsoft® Power BI®: Data Analysis Practitioner (Third Edition)
Course Description Overview
As technology progresses and becomes more interwoven with our businesses and lives, more data is collected about business and personal activities. This era of "big data" is a direct result of the popularity and growth of cloud computing, which provides an abundance of computational power and storage, allowing organizations of all sorts to capture and store data. Leveraging that data effectively can provide timely insights and competitive advantages.
Creating data-backed visualizations is key for data scientists, or any professional, to explore, analyze, and report insights and trends from data. Microsoft® Power BI® software is designed for this purpose. Power BI was built to connect to a wide range of data sources, and it enables users to quickly create visualizations of connected data to gain insights, show trends, and create reports. Power BI's data connection capabilities and visualization features go far beyond those that can be found in spreadsheets, enabling users to create compelling and interactive worksheets, dashboards, and stories that bring data to life and turn data into thoughtful action.
- Analyze data and create reports with Power BI.
- Connect to data.
- Clean, transform, and load data.
- Visualize data with Power BI.
- Enhance visuals to support data analysis.
- Customize and filter reports.
- Share reports and create dashboards in the Power BI Service.
To ensure your success, you should have experience managing data with a spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel. To meet this prerequisite, you can take any one or more of the following United States Career Campus courses:
- Microsoft® Excel® for Office 365™ (Desktop or Online): Part 1 or Microsoft® Office Excel® 2021: Part 1
- Microsoft® Excel® for Office 365™ (Desktop or Online): Part 2 or Microsoft® Office Excel® 2021: Part 2
Optionally, having experience with other data analytics tools, such as Google Analytics™ or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems such as Salesforce®, as well as a knowledge of database design concepts and basic programming constructs such as looping and branching, will help you get even more out of this course. The following courses are helpful but not required:
- Database Design: A Modern Approach
- Microsoft® Excel® for Office 365™/2021: Data Analysis with Power Pivot
- Data Analysis and Visualization with Microsoft® Excel®
Each computer will need to have the following software installed. Unless otherwise specified, the software should be full licensed versions.
- Microsoft® Windows® 11
- Microsoft .NET version 4.6.2 or later
- Microsoft 365® Business Premium (Trial)
- Microsoft® Excel® Online
- Microsoft® PowerPoint®
NOTE: Students will need to be provided with a Microsoft 365 Business Premium trial email address that they can access during the course. Training centers can use their own Microsoft 365 accounts. Students using their own Microsoft 365 accounts may experience issues that limit some of the activities.
- Adobe® Acrobat® Reader
- Power BI ® Desktop
- Any web browser
- If necessary, software for viewing the course slides. (Instructor machine only.)
For this course, you will need one computer for each student and one for the instructor. Each computer will need the following minimum hardware configurations:
- Sufficient processor speed, RAM, and storage space for good system performance when running Windows® 11/Power BI Desktop.
- Mouse and keyboard.
- Monitor capable of a screen resolution of at least 1,440 × 900 pixels, at least a 256-color display, and a video adapter with at least 4 MB of memory. 1,440 × 900 or 1,600 × 900 (16:9) are recommended because some controls (such as closing the startup screen) display beyond lower resolutions such as 1,024 × 768 or 1,280 × 800.
- High-speed, stable Internet connection.
- Mobile device to run the Power BI mobile app (optional).
- For the instructor's computer, a method to project and/or share the screen as needed for local and remote class participants.
Lesson 1: Analyzing Data and Reporting with Power BI
Topic A: Data Analysis and Visualization for Business Intelligence
Topic B: Interact with Reports in Power BI
Lesson 2: Connecting to Data
Topic A: Create Data Source Connections
Topic B: Configure and Manage Relationships
Topic C: Save Files in Power BI
Lesson 3: Cleaning, Transforming, and Loading Data
Topic A: Load, Clean, and Shape Data with the Query Editor
Topic B: Profile Data with the Query Editor
Topic C: Shape Data with the Query Editor
Topic D: Transform Data with the Query Editor
Lesson 4: Visualizing Data with Power BI
Topic A: Create Visualizations with Power BI
Topic B: Select Visualization Types with Power BI
Lesson 5: Enhancing Visuals for Data Analysis
Topic A: Customize Visuals and Pages
Topic B: Incorporate Tooltips in Visualizations
Lesson 6: Customizing and Filtering Reports
Topic A: Create Data Hierarchies
Topic B: Filter Reports
Topic C: Configure Slicers for Interactive Filtering
Lesson 7: Sharing Reports and Creating Dashboards in the Power BI Service
Topic A: Publish and Explore Reports in the Power BI Service
Topic B: Create Dashboards
Topic C: Add Q&A to Dashboards